For most of my life I disliked drinking coffee. Flavor was weird no matter how much I drank it and my stomach protested even after one cup if it was without a milk. Needless to say because of that I only drank it when it was drink of choice of the most people in the company I currently were. All of that changed on one of my holidays when I visited Jamaica which is as you could guess is also a place known for its coffee. However at first I wasn’t actually even planing on drinking it, since it wasn’t what I liked but one of the excursion I took part of, had this point in program where we visited a residence that was part of a coffee plantation in the Blue Mountains for views and some coffee lecture. Moreover the presentation that was given there, had actually so many superlatives about Jamaican Coffee that I had even harder time believing it was worth anything. If I did have to write some bullet points from that lecture it would look something like this:
-> The only coffee which is alkaline. -> It's smooth and very low caffeine meaning you can drink it any part of the day -> Bitterness is almost non existent to the points it actually tastes sweet -> It's scare so buy when you can since it's hard to get
The only point from that list that I was able to confirm after coming home was the last one. 100% pure Blue Mountain Coffee is hard to buy and costs a lot more than any other kind of beans on the market and even then you are still not sure if it’s the real deal. However that are some ongoing IT projects that try to challenge this problem (2). Additionally not only the coffee itself is a rare find. If you try to look up any research papers or books about the Jamaican Coffee you will hit a wall really fast, it turns out even worse if you would like to confirm the first 3 points. Furthermore the only 2 studies I found (3 and 4) state that there isn’t that much of a difference between Blue Mountain Coffee and the rest of the deal when it comes to chemical structure, which would mean that noticing the difference is basically left to the person enjoying the cup of coffee.
If you ever find a different study than the ones that are mentioned here and that tackle the alkaline nature of the Jamaican Blue Mountain Coffree let me know I will gladly read them.
Luckily the before mentioned lecture also had a coffee tasting part that literally stunned me and changed my view on coffee as a whole. It probably was enhanced somehow to make you buy it there on site, but it was still tasting amazing. For the first time in my life I actually enjoyed a cup of coffee without milk or any other add-ons. Could I replicate this taste I started wondering? Would it taste so good cold?
Those question were the starting point on another journey in my life which is coffee brewing and tasting. After some research Chemex became my weapon of choice along with the COMANDANTE C40 MK4 Nitro Blade and a bag of Jamaican Blue Moutains beans.
Sources:
- https://jacra.org/divisions/coffee/introduction/
- https://intelligence.coffee/fake-jamaica-blue-mountain-coffee-blockchain/
- Analysis on different grades of highly-rated Jamaica Blue Mountain coffees compared to easily available originated coffee beans Seung-Hun Lee, Rakesh Jaiswal, Nikolai Kuhnert* Department of Life Sciences and Chemistry, Jacobs University Bremen, 28759 Bremen, http://article.scirea.org/pdf/55001.pdf
- Quantification of Taste of Coffee Using Sensor with Global Selectivity Taiji Fukunaga, Kiyoshi Toko1*, Shigeru Mori, Yoshiharu Nakabayashi and Masashi Kanda https://sensors.myu-group.co.jp/sm_pdf/SM224.pdf
